Growth with an eye on profits is the new mantra at Ola, as chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal attempts to strike a fine-balance at India’s largest cab aggregator which is facing rising competition from rival Uber, the world’s most valuable startup.

Bansal, who quit his post at Infosys to join the startup in January is now tasked with preparing the company for an eventual public listing.

“(Ola) will have world class processes in 6-8 months and we want to be ready for an IPO as early as possible,” he said, without setting a clear timeline for the share float. “If we execute properly we can be financially prepared for an IPO. If we execute well we can become Infosys.”

Ola, which was last valued at $5 billion when it raised a funding round of $500 million in November from investors like China’s largest ride hailing company Didi Kuaidi, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global in addition to existing investors like Japan’s SoftBank, is also likely to move away from noncore areas of business in its drive for profitability.

Bansal termed initiatives like Ola Cafe and Ola Store as “experiments”, while the cab aggregation and wallet business will be critical.

Possible liability

“Ola’s focus on other services such as grocery which are not closely related to its core competence of providing peer-to-peer ride sharing may prove to be a liability,” said Sunil Wattal, who teaches management information systems at Temple University in the US. “Deviating from this focus and result in loss of market share.”

Founded by IIT-Bombay graduates Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola had stepped up spending in India over the last one year. But the “prudence in investing decisions” that Bansal now wants to introduce comes at a time when sustainability, not just size, is the new goal for Indian startups.

Rajiv Bansal said the immediate priority for him is to set up more robust processes, improve MIS (management information system) to make it more strategic to make decision making easier and make capital allocation based on business performance.